As we continue our Introduction to the Bible – Part 1: Creation and Fall, today we turn to Genesis 3:1-19. While this passage gives us the entire account of the Fall, we will focus on 3:1-9 today, and 3:10-19 tomorrow. I have included the entire passage so we can read it and see the full scope of what happened when Adam and Eve rejected God’s leadership in their lives and introduced sin to the world: Genesis 3:1-19 (NIV) 1Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"

4"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

10He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

12The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

13Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

14So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

16To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

17To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." Genesis 3:1-19 (NIV)

As we see the serpent, who is the devil, deceived the woman into thinking God was not good. Let me say that again–the devil deceived the woman into thinking God was not good. The key words in that statement are “deceived,” and “not good.” The devil is a liar and the father of lies according to Jesus (See John 8:44), but he doesn’t generally tell us lies that sound like lies. He wraps them in truth, which is what makes it deception. Deception is a lie that’s wrapped in truth so it seems true. Sometimes the devil’s deceptions are so enticing we can’t distinguish them from the truth unless we are being led by the Holy Spirit. While Adam and Eve were both created by God and in God’s image, while they had the ability to think and reason, the serpent appealed to Eve’s natural desire to be in charge (a desire which all of us have to some degree, but which Adam and Eve must have had in full measure, since God had told them He created them to rule over creation. The key is they were to rule over creation, but under the authority of God. The serpent suggested God was not good, that it was God who had lied to them in not creating them to know the difference between good and evil and in telling them they would die if they ate the fruit when the serpent said they would not die if they ate the fruit. What the serpent said was half true: Adam and Eve did not die physically the moment they ate the fruit, but their spirits died within them, and they were no longer able to be intimately related to God or one another. Shame would now be a part of human life until Jesus returns to restore all things (But that’s getting way ahead of the story.). In any case, the serpent appealed to Eve’s “flesh.” He showed Eve the fruit was “good for food,” and “pleasing to the eye.” It appealed to Eve’s physical side. So she ate the fruit.

Adam was with Eve as all of this transpired. When I was a young person, I thought Adam must have been somewhere else when Eve was tempted, but the text tells us clearly, “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” It was Adam’s job to protect Eve, but he didn’t raise a hand to stop her from eating the fruit. Since I realized Adam was with Eve at the moment of her eating the forbidden fruit, I have always wondered why he didn’t do anything to stop her. While the account doesn’t tell us, Robert Lewis, who I have mentioned before believes Adam’s motivation for doing nothing was he wanted to see if Eve would die from eating the fruit. If she did, Lewis reasons, God could create another woman for Adam. If she didn’t, then Adam would have to reframe his understanding of God. When Eve didn’t die, Adam ate the fruit, too, and the “Fall” was complete. It is called the Fall for many reasons: In this action Adam and Eve “fell” out of relationship with God. They “fell” into sin. They “fell” into the dominion of the serpent /devil, rather than living in relationship with God. They “fell” from their position as rulers over creation. In fact as we’ll see tomorrow, when we consider the consequences of the fall, we will see one of the punishments God gave the woman was from that point forward her husband would rule over her. Instead of co-regents over creation, now the man would rule over the woman.

As I noted in the previous paragraph, we will get to the consequences of the fall for Adam and Eve, and also for the serpent tomorrow, today let’s conclude our focus of Genesis 3:1-9 by considering what happened immediately after Adam and Eve’s eyes were “opened,” and they knew the difference between good and evil. First, they “covered themselves.” Adam and Eve had been naked and unashamed, now they were ashamed of the sexual parts of their bodies, so they covered them. The good gift of sexuality was immediately tainted by the fall, and it has been abused in so many different ways down through the millennia. The second thing that happened was Adam and Eve hid from God. The greatest blessing of life for Adam and Eve had been their daily times with God, their relationship with the living God of the universe. Now, when they heard God coming they hid from Him and didn’t want to be found. The fall brought sin into the world, and sin cannot stand to be in the presence of God. God can’t be in the presence of sin, but sin does not desire to be with God, either. Jesus told Nicodemus the reason people prefer darkness to light is because their deeds are evil. They want to hide in the darkness. (See John Chapter 3) These first two consequences of the fall have been the most pervasive down through history. People have misused the blessing of sexuality in every generation since Adam and Eve, and people have hidden from God in every generation since Adam and Eve. While we could point to many other consequences of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, those two are so significant we see their impact in nearly every book of the Bible. In our day, people have taken the Fall to a new “level,” if you will, by seeking to convince others that sexual sin doesn’t exist, and perhaps God doesn’t exist either. If God does exist, He must be relegated to the fringes of life, or relegated to private portions of our lives, so as not to disturb those who don’t believe He exists, or who don’t believe He exists as Father, Son (Jesus) and Holy Spirit. The Fall rocked the core of human existence and experience. As we see in the biblical record, the Fall occurs in Genesis 3, and by Genesis 6 God has decided to wipe out the planet and start over. While many in our day see the Genesis creation accounts, the account of the fall, and the account of the flood as myths which never happened, nothing human beings have ever invented to explain creation, or even why humanity continues to languish in so many different sins (even though they wouldn’t call it sin) has ever come close to making as much sense as the realities of creation, fall, redemption and Kingdom found in God’s word.

If you think about the “scientific” explanations of creation and the population of the earth with multitudes of species including human beings, through the “Big Bang” and then evolution, one must ask, “Who created the bang?” and “If human beings are evolving why does human nature continue to demonstrate so many flaws. The flaws are detrimental to our survival and yet they have not reduced in number over the millennia. One could even say they are more numerous than ever in the societies that are the “most” evolved.” I have always found it interesting, though sad, that the most “brilliant” minds among us are often the ones who have the most difficulty seeing the truth. They would rather have theories that can never be proved than “fairy tales”–as they call God’s word–to explain the human condition. Yet, it is the “fairy tales,” which make the most sense, since sin is pervasive in every culture, and only where God is worshiped in Spirit and truth do people change in genuine ways to reflect the original goodness of our Creator. We’ll have much more to say about this as we move through the year, but it’s so important for us to understand one does not have to be mentally challenged in order to believe the accounts in the Bible offer the most reasonable explanation of human condition, particularly when it comes to the flaws in humanity and the source of “redemption,” which we’ll get to next week. For today, let’s remember the Fall ushered sin into human experience, destroyed our relationship with God, and turned every good thing in creation into a potential “tool” for death and destruction. Tomorrow, we’ll look at the consequences of Fall for Adam, Even, the Serpent and the creation.

As we turn to today’s application project, it is once again more of a reflection than anything else. Here it is: In your One-to-One notebook or computer file write your reflections on what the Genesis 3:1-19 account tells us about God, humanity and the nature of sin (disobedience to God’s will.) Focus more on Genesis 3:1-9, since we’ll be emphasizing Genesis 3:10-19 tomorrow, but reread the entire text as you reflect. Ask yourself, “Does what Adam and Even did sound like something I would have done, had I been placed in their situation? (Until we reflect in real and personal ways on what we read about in the Bible, the accounts will never be real to us.) I have also found great benefit over the years as I have studied and reflected on biblical accounts in putting myself into the situations about which I’m reading. As I do that and ask, “What would I have done if I were there?” It helps me to see that the people were real, and God’s word is real to me, that is it impacts me where I live. When you’ve taken some time to reflect, record anything that helps you gain a better understanding of when and why you sin. As we’ll see when we start talking about redemption, unless we’re honest with ourselves about our sin, we won’t benefit from the redemption Jesus died to give us!

Heavenly Father, Thank You for giving me free will to follow You as I please. Fill me with the Holy Spirit so I will use that free will to follow You as You please. This I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.